Yes, the Olympic Village bed frames are made from cardboard but they aren’t ‘anti-sex’

The Paris 2024 Olympics are a little over a month away, which means athletes will soon get accustomed to their new living situations at the Olympic Village. 

Ahead of the games, viral posts making the rounds on social media claim Olympic athletes competing in Paris will sleep on beds made from cardboard. Some of the posts say the beds are an attempt to deter intimacy among athletes, with people online calling them “anti-sex.”

THE QUESTION

Are the bed frames that will be in the Olympic Village made from cardboard?

THE SOURCES

• Paris Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
• Airweave Inc., a mattress company based in Japan
• Official Olympics account on X
• TikTok video posted by the Associated Press
• Rhys McClenaghan, Olympic gymnast

THE ANSWER

Yes, the bed frames that will be in the Olympic Village are made from cardboard. But the cardboard bed frames are made for sustainability purposes, not to limit sex among athletes.

WHAT WE FOUND

Olympic athletes competing in the Paris 2024 Games will sleep on bed frames made from cardboard. But these bed frames are made for sustainability purposes, not to limit sex among athletes, as some people online claim.

Airweave, the Japanese company that provided cardboard bed frames for the Olympic Village during the 2020 Tokyo Games, says it is partnering with the Olympics again in 2024. 

“We will produce the cardboard bed frames in France, after the games, recycle them in France and donate the mattress and pillows for second-life in France as well,” Motokuni Takaoka, president and CEO of Airweave, said in a statement. “We promise to contribute to the Paris 2024 sustainability goals through our social good bedding.”

A photo of the cardboard bed frames is shown in a summary of a Paris Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games sustainability report and the Associated Press shared a TikTok video in July 2023 showing the bed frames for the Paris Games. 

An April 2020 report from Tokyo organizers said the cardboard bed frames would be turned into recycled paper after the Olympics. The official Olympics account on X also previously shared a video highlighting the cardboard beds as part of sustainability plans at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. 

Ahead of the Tokyo Games, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan tweeted a video in an attempt to debunk the claims about “anti-sex” beds. In the video, McClenaghan is jumping on one of the beds. The bed does not collapse as McClenaghan hops several times.

The Olympics X account shared McClenaghan’s video, writing, “Thanks for debunking the myth…the sustainable cardboard beds are sturdy!” 

The Olympic Village has a longstanding reputation for being an intimate place for athletes. To encourage safe sex, organizers typically make condoms available to athletes.

At the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics, a reported 450,000 condoms were available to athletes. For the Tokyo Games, that number was much lower as the COVID-19 pandemic loomed over the event. Still, a reported 150,000 condoms were given to the more than 11,000 Olympic athletes.